Watchwords for Trump Time

Part of the New Orleans March on Friday, Jan 20th, 2017

New Orleans I read that the former spokesperson for the Clinton campaign and communications whiz for President Obama had left Washington during the Inauguration for New Orleans, essentially embracing the its popular slogan of being “the city that care forgot.” That was not quite true this time since 1700 people marched in the afternoon on Inauguration Day in protest and many more are expected for the Women’s March in this city, as they are in cities around the country.

Interviewing Becky Bond, a former senior adviser to the Sanders’ campaign and co-author of the new book, Rules for Revolutionaries, on my weekly radio show, in talking about the hollowness of the Democratic Party, she noted the paradoxical point that the Republican candidate, meaning President Trump, had “run to the left of the Democratic nominee on economic issues.” The point struck like a hammer, it was so true.

And, listen to this from Trump’s hardline and brief inaugural address:

“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share the wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs, and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all around our land.”

I have trouble disagreeing with him. He’s right, even repeating the old Huey Long populist slogan, “share the wealth.”

But when he says,

We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action constantly complaining but never doing anything about it. The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action.

I have trouble not believing that this is all talk, because so far his actions still look the opposite of the words that framed whatever his words might lure us to believe.

Indeed we’ll see. Perhaps at our peril.

But, finally, I noted another quote in the papers commemorating the inaugural from the major British funder of the Brexit campaign, and at $11 million, the single largest political donor in British history, Arron Banks. He claimed that the advice he has given Trump when they met was simple: “Never apologize, facts are just white noise, emotions rule.”

Given the electoral campaign and the run up to this new presidency, it sounds frighteningly true.